Category Archives: Activism

Thomas Merton: “Contemplation cannot construct a new world by itself”

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Thomas Merton, in the introduction to the Spanish language edition to his complete works:

Contemplation cannot construct a new world by itself. Contemplation does not feed the hungry; it does not clothe the naked… and it does not return the sinner to peace, truth, and union with God. But without contemplation we cannot see what we do… Without contemplation we cannot understand the significance of the world in which we must act. Without contemplation we remain small, limited, divided, partial; we adhere to the insufficient, permanently united to our narrow group and its interests, losing sight of justice and charity, seized by the passions of the moments… Without contemplation, without the intimate, silent, secret pursuit of truth through love, our action loses itself in the world and becomes dangerous.

“the simple way” » 12 Marks of New Monasticism

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Through a google alert pointing me to this article, I just stumbled on The Simple Way, “a community in inner-city Philadelphia that has helped birth and connect radical faith communities around the world.”

I am looking forward to exploring more. But first, I love this clear exposition of their values (how many elements of monasticism can you count?):

  1. Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.
  2. Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.
  3. Hospitality to the stranger
  4. Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.
  5. Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church.
  6. Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community along the lines of the old novitiate.
  7. Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.
  8. Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.
  9. Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.
  10. Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies.
  11. Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.
  12. Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.

via about the simple way » 12 Marks of New Monasticism.

Immanence

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I’m heading off the grid for a week, but I really look forward to giving this more attention when I get back: ”artmonks: children of Thoreau & Whitehead,” a post by Adrian Ivakhiv.

If Thoreau’s quest to “live deliberately [...] and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” were cross-bred with A. N. Whitehead’s insight that creativity is the driving core of all things in the universe, the “universal of universals,” then today’s “artmonks” are children not of Marx and Coca-Cola (as Godard once labeled the activists of the 1960s and Xiaoping Lin more recently called the Chinese artistic avant-garde), but children of Thoreau and Whitehead.

The monastic ideal has always been about living deliberately. And in a world that is rapidly outgrowing the secular-religious divide — becoming simultaneously post-secular, for those outgrowing the constraints of secularism, and post-religious, or at least post-traditional, for those no longer in obeisance to inherited religion — monasticism today is reinventing itself in interesting and creative ways. “Artmonks” are those who bring a mindful deliberation and dedication to the creative process, following it wherever it leads them. They are the monks of immanence, post-traditional devotees synthesizing the vita contemplativa with the vita activa in an age of Burning Man and the internet.

Ivakhiv lists a handful of outstanding artmonks:

Some others who’ve pursued their creative visions down whatever spiritual rabbitholes they led them include Joseph Beuys, Yves Klein, Marina Abramović, Stan Brakhage, Genesis P. Orridge, David Tibet, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Andrei Tarkovsky, Derek Jarman, Carolee Schneemann, John Cage, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, Richard Long, Betsy Damon, Mary Beth Edelson, Vito Acconci, outsider artists like Henry Darger and Ferdinand Cheval, and on and on and on.

Rohan Gunatillake on the Social Life of Meditation

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I just came across this video on the “Social life of Meditation” from Rohan Gunatillake of 21awake.com and the Here & Now Project.  After wrapping up a series of posts on monastic separateness and engagement a few days ago, it’s great to see these issues confronted from a different perspective. Rohan identifies “four major ways in which meditation is social—the positive effect the practice can have on people around us, how it can radically re-orientate the relationship of self to other, the value of a community to support one’s practice and lastly, the enabling of new practice modes through social media.”

Continue on to Buddhist Geeks to read on about the role of social media in meditation, and Rohan’s peer-to-peer meditation experiment.

Announcing 10 Artmonk chapters. Are you an artmonk?

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Apropos of my recent posts on activism and monasticism, and the fact that I’ll be working on developing the San Francisco chapter, I repost this, from the Art Monastery website, written by the Labro artmonks:

The Art Monastery Project has launched Artmonk chapters in the following 10 cities: Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Reno, Bloomington, Indiana, Chicago, Buffalo, New York City. If you are an Artmonk and want to get involved, join your Local Artmonk Chapter on Facebook! If you think there is a lot of  Artmonk interest in your city and it’s not on the above list, email info@artmonastery.org to set up a Chapter near you!

What is an Artmonk?

Our world has been shaped and enriched for millennia by what we could call “artmonks”: passionate people who reflect deeply about what they can give to the world and use their full creative inspiration and dedication to manifest this insight in the world, regardless of prevailing activities and obsessions of their historical time, place, and station.

The path of the artmonk has led not only to works considered grand, even world changing, but also to countless small works of caring and beauty. The scale of works does not define the path, but rather the path reveals the artmonk’s unwavering integrity, boundless creativity, contemplative awareness, and compassion for all beings, to whom we are fundamentally connected.

Are you an Artmonk? Continue reading →

Monastic Separateness & Engagement (part 4): a Challenge

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[This series of posts, "The Elements of Monasticism" asks the question, what exactly is monasticism? "Separateness & Engagement" will unfold in a series of 4 posts (links: 1, 2, 3, 4).]

Looking back at some of the questions I asked in part 1, the assumptions I unpacked in part 2, and the different perspectives I explored in part 3, here’s a 10-part challenge to would-be secular monastics regarding separateness & engagement:

1. You can be isolated and still impact the world

2. You can be monastic and rarely be isolated

3. You can be a monastic and be more engaged than anyone else

4. It is no threat to your monkhood to be engaged with the world

5. Just because some monastics are missionaries doesn’t mean all (or even most) are.

6. Monastics can embrace social liberalism.

7. Monks can be activists, politicians, artists, scientists, tech-gurus and entrepreneurs (monks can even make money)

8. A monastery can be a role models of what a “quadruple bottom line” organizations can look like. As the world’s oldest economically viable, environmentally sound, socially responsible, spiritually active communities, they can exemplify what many businesses, nonprofits, and intentional communities are moving toward.

9. Your community can call itself a monastery.

10. You can call yourself a monk.

Now we’ve come back around to Dostoevsky’s Father Zosima:

“For monks are not a special sort of people, but only what all people ought to be.”

In his introduction to Benedict’s Dharma: Buddhists Reflect on the Rule of Saint Benedict, editor Patrick Henry writes:

In many places the population of monasteries is declining, but, ironically, more and more people appear to think that Father Zossima was onto something. Monasteries are crowded with guests; books that draw on monastic spirituality are best-sellers. If, as a student of mine once said, a monk or nun lurks somewhere inside each of us, then nuns and monks can teach us not just about their life, but also about ourselves—who we are and what we may become.

Monastic Separateness & Engagement (part 3): Monasticism in Society

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[This series of posts, "The Elements of Monasticism" asks the question, what exactly is monasticism? "Separateness & Engagement" will unfold in a series of 4 posts (links: 1, 2, 3, 4).]

A gem from Father Louis (aka Thomas Merton), in case you missed it a few weeks ago:

The monastery is neither a museum nor an asylum. The monk remains in the world from which the monk has fled, and the monk remains a potent, though hidden, force in that world. Beyond all the works which may accidentally attach themselves to the vocation, the monk acts on the world simply by being a monk. The presence of contemplatives is, to the world, what the presence of yeast is to dough … if the monk stands, in some sense, above the divisions of human society, that does not mean the monk has no place in the history of nations. The monk has always been, and always will be, by the vocation, sympathetic to any social and cultural movement that favors the growth of the human spirit.

From historical context to historical context, tradition to tradition, monastery to monastery, abbess to abbess, monk to monk, the truth is more complex than the assumptions in part 2 suggest. While Ariana Huffington’s casual critique (see part 1) of the idios kosmos of the monastery might more precisely be leveled at hermits (but seriously, can’t we just leave them alone?), one has to wonder:

What is the role of monasticism in society?

A correspondent of Thomas Merton’s, Discalced Carmelite hermit William McNamara (founder of the first Roman Catholic hermitic community in the United States), has written a fantastic piece on the “Prophetic Role of Monasticism“:

The monk is not a special kind of person; everyone is a special kind of monk, because the central and deepest human impulse is monastic. Monos means one, and the wayfaring human person finds oneness only by tracking Christ through deserts and dark nights into Glory. Nevertheless, a culture needs a sacred center, and the monastery provides an entry to that center, from which society derives essential clues to the mystery of its destiny.

Even if we’re not tracking Christ, per se, how can a secular monasticism serve as an entryway to the sacred center of an increasingly technological, interfaith society? Or can it?

When we talk about the value of a monastery to the society it’s a part of, there are a few different (though not mutually exclusive) possible perspectives:

Quietism: Monasteries have no direct value to society. The point of a monastery is to be disengaged from society. If society benefits from this (e.g. in seeing itself reflected somehow in the monastery), that is great for society, but it’s not the point.

Dying way of life: Whatever role they may have once played, monasteries have lost their relevance to the technological, developed, secular world. Nice while they lasted.

Asylums: Monasteries are homes for monks, mystics and other insane people [Sorry Father Louis].  See also “Mystic Storage.”

Survival of the Fittingest: Whatever monasteries may once have been, they are evolving, just as business has evolved, government has evolved, and the social sector has evolved. They fill a unique niche in society (e.g. the responsibly governed spiritual community niche), AND they are themselves a unique niche for certain people in society (they are home to certain people that would otherwise find it difficult to find a truly fitting place, and without which there would be many people deemed socially inept, deviant, useless)… a subtly distinct view from saying “monasteries are asylums”.

Activism: Monasteries are a part of a society. On one level, the monastics residing within are often called upon, out of uncommon stillness, to extraordinary activism. On a deeper level, monasteries reflect the values and conscience of a society. McNamara writes:

…There is an intimate relationship between real, live monasticism and the socio-political world. Seen in historical context, the vows of obedience and poverty originally represented ways of transcending and criticizing a conventional loyalty to status quo power arrangements and the reification of people in servitude to an unjust economic system. In the past the monastic vows exemplified a quality of relationship and communal equity undreamt of by either, the oppressed victims or their masters.

Politics is, after all, the science of the possible. Monasticism should be a real alternative, and thus make an enormous contribution to the future direction of political and economic organization.

…We take vows to overcome the slavery of modern utilitarianism. Most of us are enslaved: we are workers instead of men and women. Monastic life ought to be the most dangerous, the most difficult and the most wonderful, exciting adventure in the world. What’s wrong with monastic life today? In great monastic orders there is no creative subversion, no counterculture. Monastic orders are, for the most part, locked into serving the petrified conventions and institutions of contemporary society that cause the disease and frustration that are sickening so many people and rendering them impotent. We cannot survive on banality; we need firsthand experience of primordial truth.

…[M]onkishness is an indispensable and ineluctable dimension of every human being.

Economic Actors: Monasteries are real economic actors in a real marketplace. They produce, consume, demand, and supply. They have a rational self interest, and serve the rational (and trans-rational) self interest of their inhabitants.

Antechamber to another life: “The power base of monasticism is other-worldliness,” says McNamara. Monasteries offer us a glimpse of another world (whether you interpret that to mean something recognizably spiritual, or merely a life where you’re more whole, compassionate, aware, wise, awake, communal, human, alive etc.), and the rites of passage to get there.

Intentional Communities: Whatever role monasteries may once have played, they are now just one of a handful of types of intentional community, which we might divide into communities of interest, communities of practice, and communities of place such as communes, ecovillages, student cooperatives, land co-ops, cohousing groups, ashrams, kibbutzes, and farming collectives, co-working facilities. As such, they train humans to live together in harmony,

Retreat Centers for Contemplative Creatives: The growing class of “Contemplative Creatives” needs a place to escape to, even for a week or two.

Universities of Practice/Museums: It is important that there be institutions devoted to spiritual/contemplative practice alone—what we might call “universities of practice”.  It is important that there be a repository of culture, texts, and debate outside of academia.  [Sorry again, Father Louis]

Time Capsules: Whatever relevance monasteries have to the technological, developed, secular world, we should keep them around in case civilization collapses. They may help us through a coming dark age, the way they helped us through the last dark ages.

Subtlism: Regardless of whether monastics are actively engaged in society, a monastery serves a valuable function in society merely by existing. It is important that somewhere in the world, there are humans devoted entirely to the attainment of stillness, awakening, peace, etc. and that their efforts ripple out to the rest of society: directly, in that we in society can draw inspiration and peace just from knowing that there are people out there doing this, and indirectly, through the indeterminate and subtle impacts they might make.

Fourth Sector Organizations: Monasteries in some ways gave birth to the growing fourth sector:

[From the website]: Over the past few decades, the boundaries between the public (government), private (business), and social (non-profit) sectors have been blurring as many pioneering organizations have been blending social and environmental aims with business approaches.

There are many expressions of this trend, including corporate social responsibility, microfinance, venture philanthropy, sustainable businesses, social enterprise, privatization, community development and others. As this activity matures, it is becoming formalized as a ‘Fourth Sector’ of the economy. To better understand the emergence of the Fourth Sector, it is helpful to study recent shifts in organizational behavior across the three traditional sectors.

Businesses are dedicating more resources to delivering social and environmental benefits. Cause-based marketing, the triple bottom line, and corporate social responsibility are a few of the buzzwords that have come into usage in recent years as part of this trend. Meanwhile, public and social sector organizations are attempting to operate in a more businesslike method.

Quadruple-Bottom-Line Corporations: People, planet, profit… & spirit? From society’s perspective, monasteries are corporations that responsibly maximize financial capital, human capital, natural capital, and spiritual capital.


Jesus Lama

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…the encounter between Catholicism and Buddhism cannot take place at the level of the Magisterium, it can only take place at the level of two contemplatives talking together in private.

—Harold Talbott, paraphrasing Dom Aelred Graham, in “Thomas Merton in the Himalayas, An Interview with Harold Talbott” from Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Summer, 1992.

If the typos and the fuchsia are off-putting in the link above, I recommend reading the article in full at Tricycle (you’ll need a paid membership; pick up a copy of Rebel Buddha while you’re at it.), here.

More highlights:

He went out to take photographs and met Sonam Kazi. I knew this from his eyes before he told me. And that was the birth of the blues, the beginning of the Dzogchen teachings for Thomas Merton. Sonam Kazi was the official interpreter assigned to the Dalai Lama by the government of India, the interpreter, for example, in the talks between Nehru, Chou En Lai, and the Dalai Lama. Sonam ran into Merton on the road, invited him to a teahouse and zapped him.

…Merton was a ripened and ready object of a visit from Sonam Kazi and he got it. He said to me occasionally after that “I came to Asia to study Zen in Japan and now I have changed my itinerary and I’m going to study Dzogchen in India with the Tibetans.”

…

[T]he Dalai Lama looked at Merton and said, “What do you want?” And Merton said, “I want to study Dzogchen.”

…

Tricycle: What did the Dalai Lama ask Merton about Christianity?

Talbott: If I’m not mistaken, it was about how you live the contemplative life in the West and what you do to make it possible in this modern world to live the life of a monk in the West. How do you stave off spiritual annihilation?

…

The fact is that he told the Dalai Lama that wanted to study Dzogchen so the Dalai Lama spent hours preparing him to find a Dzogchen guru. And he found him in the Chatral Rinpoche. He went down to Sri Lanka where he convinced himself that he had the experience of dhamakaya (emptiness), seeing the status of the Shakyamuni statues and Ananda. Then he was electrocuted and died and we are left to sit here and talk about how Dzogchen was the final bestowal on Merton by a divinely compassionate savior.

…

Then he went and addressed the heads of contemplative communities in Bangkok. The conclusions he reached were conclusions that the late Trungpa Rinpoche had drawn too: in Merton’s words “It’s every monk for himself now.” Structures can no longer be relied on to provide protection to foster the spiritual life. Everyone – ordained or not- for himself, through his practice of her practice. And one of the most congenial means for going on your own is Dzogchen.

Monastic Separateness & Engagement (part 2): Assumptions

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[This series of posts, "The Elements of Monasticism" asks the question, what exactly is monasticism? "Separateness & Engagement" will unfold in a series of 4 posts (links: 1, 2, 3, 4).]

Source: http://goo.gl/Q7ees

The conflation I mentioned in part 1 represents one of a number of assumptions of how monastics exist in society. I will now attempt to summarize some other assumptions I’ve encountered in myself and others. While I’m sure that all of these are true for somemonk somewhere, they are all impoverished views based on romanticized images of what the monastic life is about. For each assumption, I offer another way to think about the issue.

Some assumptions about monastics in society:

Isolation = disengaged

Teresa of Avila

Assumption: Intuitively, you can’t impact the world when you’re by yourself. The only way to impact the world is to be vocal (and loud), to be a conscious consumer or an entrepreneur, to be producing, to be creative, to be social.

Counter: The isolation that most monks spend at least some portion of their lives in renders them even more capable of making bold, positive impacts in their communities and the larger world. The depth of practice afforded by solitude makes indirect (and subtly direct) impacts on the world.

Monastic = isolated

Assumption: Monastic means hermit for life, right?

Counter: Hermiticism is just one form of monastic living. Few monks are 100% hermit. Most monks move in and out of periods of solitude and silence throughout their lives.

Monastic = disengaged.

Assumption: It’s a truism that monks are disengaged from public life. If you’re engaged with public life, you can’t truly be a monk. The monastic venture is defined not by balancing activity and stillness, but by stillness or purity alone, and the extent to which monastics are called to activism is the extent to which society is fucked up.

Counter: Monastic can equal more engaged. Monastics, through contemplation, engage reality as it is. “The true meaning of spiritual is real,” says Emerson. They are the ones who have the hardest time ignoring the real plight of the impoverished, the destruction of the ecosystem, and collapse of systems of finance and governance.

Engaged monastics are an aberration.

Martin Luther and his theses

Assumption: The monks who have chosen to engage public life (Thomas Merton, Mother Teresa, Thich Nhat Hanh, monk-activists in Burma and Cambodia, Dada Maheshvarananda, Wayne Teasdale, Bede Griffiths, Martin Luther, Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich, and innumerable other monastics making extraordinary impacts in a variety of ways) do so as exception to the Rule that binds them, often in response to overwhelming social pressures.

Counter: The examples above are among the most charismatic, outspoken or historically famous “engaged” monastics. It is true, these do not represent the majority of monastics, who work in ever subtler and more invisible ways, through small acts of unseen but not unfelt kindness and large yet unpublicized acts of self-sacrifice, passion and conviction. Famous monastics are an aberration, I would argue, but engaged monastics are much more common than they would have us know.

Engaged monks just want to proselytize.

Assumption: Monk activists are really just looking for a platform to spread their chosen faith, often by preaching to the most vulnerable members of society. Monk activism is a form of missionary work (cf. Mother Theresa).

Counter: Evangelism happens, I’m sure, but monastics also act out of the same impulses that drive the rest of us to engage the world: compassion, urgency, and a desire for wholeness.

Monastic activism rejects social liberalism.

Assumption: Monastics only engage the world in a way that reinforces or sanctifies poverty and rejects things like contraception and abortion.

Sister Chittester with Bono, Shriver

Counter: The Poverty that monastics vow doesn’t have to be the systemic poverty that religion reinforces (according to Marxism, though not according to one study). In Catholicism, feminism does seem to be the exception. There are examples: Hildegard, Teresa of Avila, Sister Margaret McBride, Sister Joan Chittister, (and theologian Mary Daly, though not a nun). Now that the pope has stated that contraception is a lesser sin than knowingly spreading HIV, perhaps there’s more wiggle room for the monastic world to educate and empower women.

Social engagement for monastics = feed-the-pooractivism (≠business, art, politics, technology, scientific discourse, the market, philosophy, or activisms that involve these)

"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem," said William of Ockham

Assumption: The only way for monks to be engaged publicly is through a traditional feed-the-poor/care-for-the-sick kind of activism. Anything else tarnishes a monk’s purity (and since being a monk is defined by purity, destroys one’s true identity as a monk). Politics, academia, the art world, technology, scientific discourse and (most of all) the market are inappropriate venues for monastic public activity. In addition to those engaged monks listed above, you’ll have to disregard the scientific likes of “Doctor of Wonders” Roger Bacon, William of Ockham, Gregor Mendel, etc. And disregard the Lasermonks. Disregard Sister Susan Mika, a shareholder activist.

Counter: Monastics are the world’s oldest social entrepreneurs.  Monasteries were the first For-Benefit corporations. Monasticism was the birthplace of scientific method. Literally and figuratively, the monk and the artist are one.

These are just a few of the simplistic assumptions I and others have made regarding monasticism along a certain line of inquiry. There are, of course, the wide range of myths and images about monastic life, monastic history, the relationships of monasteries and organized religions, etc. But these are for another day.

In the next post in this series, I’ll look at the role of monasticism, broadly speaking, as an institution in civil society, the market, and the wider world.